Clinton locks down key endorsement ahead of Puerto Rico visit

Ahead of Hillary Clinton’s first campaign stop in Puerto Rico on Friday afternoon, New York's first Hispanic City Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, endorsed the Democratic front-runner in an op-ed in Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper.

“For Puerto Ricans — both on the island and throughout the diaspora — this election [is] the most important in our lifetime,” Mark-Viverito writes in Nuevo Dia. “Hillary supports Puerto Rico’s push to be allowed to declare bankruptcy and be allowed to restructure its debt. Hillary has also highlighted the inequality Puerto Rico faces by its lack of federal funding under Medicare and Medicaid.”

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Mark-Viverito is considered a rising star in New York City politics and has begun to make a name for herself on the national stage speaking out on immigration. She remains a well-known figure in Puerto Rico and plans to campaign for Clinton and other Democrats in 2016 in Florida, which has a booming Puerto Rican population, a spokesman said.

Mark-Viverito endorsed Clinton in 2008 and served as a delegate for her at the Democratic National Convention that year. The two do not share a long history but have crossed paths in recent years: They appeared together at a children’s event in the Bronx last year, along with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

In her op-ed, Mark-Viverito lauds Clinton as an advocate for women, a reformer of the criminal justice system and someone who will push for comprehensive immigration reform. And she castigates the Republicans who have made "criminalization of Latinos and immigrants central to their campaigns."

“While the Democratic Party has fielded good candidates who are proposing solutions, the Republican primary has been ugly,” she writes. “Simply put, the Republican primary has been a terrifying spectacle in madness."

Mark-Viverito’s ringing endorsement also highlights the elephant in New York City's political room when it comes to 2016 — the absence of an endorsement by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio, who served as Clinton’s campaign manager on her 2000 Senate race and worked in Bill Clinton’s administration, has so far withheld an endorsement. The hold out comes as he attempts to position himself as a national progressive standard-bearer, even co-bylining an op-ed in The Washington Post with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and traveling to Iowa and Wisconsin to speak on national issues. This fall, de Blasio plans to host a presidential forum in New York City. He has said he needs to hear more from Clinton, as well as the other Democratic candidates, before offering any endorsement in the race. And he has on multiple occasions gushed about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

A City Hall spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the mayor’s thinking, or any timeline for an endorsement.